One of the areas where automation is used more and more often nowadays is the building automation. Thanks to the application of the technology, we can now call some buildings “intelligent” or “smart” ones.

With respect to the purpose of the intelligent building use, we can divide them to:

• Residential buildings,
• Buildings providing services (schools, hospitals, offices, shops),
• Production buildings,
• Storage buildings.

The priority is to build a safe building, which is environment-friendly and has low energy consumption. This leads to higher deployment of automation technologies and so-called “Intelligent Buildings”.

Facility management of the buildings based on automation technologies is focused on the following areas:

• Ensuring the safety of inhabitants and their properties,
• Transport of people and goods inside the building,
• Reducing energy costs,
• Optimization of working conditions.

The importance of each area depends on the building’s purpose.

In general, it is possible to describe automation procedure by the following steps, which are also applied in building automation:

1. Information needed for the control process is acquired from the sensors.
2. Information is transmitted to the control center, where it is analysed and commands for actuators are issued.
3. Actuators take action to perform the requested reactions.

From the management point of view, there are two basic ways of control:

• Logical control, which is described in the theory of automation by functions of Boolean algebra;
• Regulation, where a regulator ensures the maintenance of selected physical quantities within the prescribed limits.